Tui Na (Chinese Medical Massage)

Tui Na (literally: push and grasp) is a task specific form of massage, acupressure, kneading, and stretching custom tailored to each specific patient based on their individual symptoms or disease.

Tui Na is a deep tissue form of massage usually performed without oils, can be done with the clothes on, and the massage is specifically designed to increase blood flow to the diseased areas of the body and thus accelerate recovery time.

I’ve gotten a massage before, so what’s the big deal?

More expert levels of Tui Na focus on treating the problem or disease at its source, and thus can be very concentrated on a few select regions or points on the body. This is opposed to a shotgun technique of massaging where a large area of the body is rubbed mindlessly, in the hopes that if everything is massaged one can’t possibly miss. Such a method is diffuse and often ineffective for severe diseases.

Many call this crude technique ‘massage therapy’. Labeling an expert in Tui Na a ‘massage therapist’ is like calling a highly skilled neurosurgeon a ‘brain-poker’ (‘Brain-poking’, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!). A true master of Tui Na can provide a level of relief from discomfort in one minute that an hour of ‘massage therapy’ may not be able to provide.

Don’t be fooled by those that say they are doing Tui Na when in fact they are doing massage therapy. At the same time, don’t discount the skill of all of those who say they are doing massage therapy. Some have dedicated their lives to their trade and have become very proficient but have simply not found (or didn’t care to find) the vocabulary to satisfactorily describe what it is they are doing.

A good rule of thumb is to classify massage the way we classify drugs. There are the medicinal drugs and then there are the recreational drugs. Some would argue that these categories often overlap, but nevertheless it helps to make the distinction. So, when you feel like having some fun, choose the recreational massage. If you are looking to treat an illness, however, you require a medical massage.

Effective Tui Na often times focuses on the joints in treating chronic as well as acute pain as is seen in Connective Tissue Acceleration – CTA. Injuries of the joints tend to take longer to heal than those in the muscles and so should be addressed especially in chronic musculo-skeletal diseases. Ligaments, tendons, articular cartilage, and bones are mobilized manually to provide a much faster healing time than is possible without such stimulation.